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Just saying hello, About 18 months ago the builder turned up to start work on our home. We have NEVER done any kind of renovation/extension work before, so naively thought it’ll be easy to add on/extend a dormer bed room :). A well, unstable existing foundations, complex steel installs, chasing HETAS certified installers for the flue etc etc, and we are now have the finish line in sights 😀. Still have some decision to make on garden wall finishes etc, but we are nearly there. Pretty sure we could have done lots of things differently etc, though I’ve actually enjoyed the process, and feel really lucky to have been able to build a home bespoke to our needs. I’m looking forwards to doing the same thing again, but for retirement some time around 2050!!

There were quite a few different people there; sales, design, windows, even Kevin Blair, son of the founder Joe Blair, who took us on part of the factory tour. We were there for over 2 hours, including a 1-1 session where I covered any outstanding questions I still had. Great session. I also took lots of photos so I'll write things up and attach those in a new thread and will provide the link here. Didn't really touch on labour shortages, but they are seeing an increase in demand from people building lots of houses, especially in the social sector where they explained it is easier for a company to secure any additional funding required for Passivhaus standards as they can offset it against potential future requirements to help with heating costs etc. From a pure materials perspective, they acknowledged the challenges of Brexit, COVID-19, etc. and how that initially affected costs and quotes quite significantly but things are a little more settled now and as they expand, they're able to secure pricing for longer periods of time as they're able to commit to larger orders. They're also sourcing from multiple suppliers and from multiple regions as costs and availability flex due to growing seasons etc.

From memory, and it is a fair few years since I was involved, and terminology changes, it is to do with the amount of overall capacity and the number of participants joining the auctions. So say on a typical day, in November, you have 500 people joining the action to either sell their generation, or buy a slot they hope to fill, and compare that to a really sunny June day when PV generation may be high, so there is capacity to dump (sell) but not many slots to fill (buy) as overall capacity needs to be lower, that day may have 1000 people entering the auction. Over the year, it therefore means that 50% of the buy, or sell, bids fail. Another way to think of it is as a sealed bid auction. some houses may get 100 bids, another 1 bid, with the overall average say being 30 bids per house. If there is lots of cheap money, the average number of bids per house may go up to 45 (50% higher). This would give a quirk that could be seen as excess demand (more bids at higher prices), but if you look at the supply side (and you have to with electrical generation), the number of houses for sale may be the same, or lower. That's is basically what Game Theory does in a public auction, it is not a case of the winner takes all, more a case of more people spreading the total load (I think in the movies, Beautiful Mind, the most desirable girl, that all the boys lusted after, did not get taken home, but everyone else were matched up, so one loser but many people still satisfied). So the most competitive may not always win, as the auctioneer needs to keep a number of players in the market, or a monopoly, duopoly, oligarchy or other limited number of suppliers can arise, and that is not good for reliability, prices, environmental considerations, bulk power transportation (which is possibly why they turn of some of the capacity) and other reasons.

Unrolled EDPM. Half up first, 2nd half up after. converted garage flat roof...

How about we invent a device that turns excess body fat into electricity. I’d not have to import any leccy for years! 🙂

I would say that's maybe 8 person days max of brush cutting at whatever daily rate (EUR 200?), so EUR 1,600? A few hundred to have it carted away. EUR 2K all in? Maybe 50% of that or less if most can be done with a small tractor and a flail mower ... and they have the equipment sitting around and live within a km or two.

I'm guessing the nearest blue dot (to your green dot) is meant to be the chamber. As everyone has said - take the lid off and you'll figure everything out including depth. May only take you a few minutes. Actually the map shows two inspection chambers either side of you plot and one in the middle (the latter unlikely but worth looking for). Any two points located with depths etc and you're probably home and dry (so to speak). A topo at a later date will give you the respective invert levels and positions accurately on the map. A bit weird that they didn't just run it along the side of the road and not through your plot. You could ask them how much to move it to give you maximum flexibility.

Then that was not laid properly, I have fitted GRP roofing over many years and not one call back. If it’s good enough for boats, what's not to like 🤷‍♂️

Storm drainage.

I assumed they are supply pipes, but we just don't know do we. Surely the water co should at least be able to tell you if they are supply or drainage pipes? Of course there will be both in the vicinity, but if only one is on the map it still begs the question, where?

apart from grid problems the main problem is that someone does not know how to do a deal --how can it be sense to pay the turbine company when they turn them off,because of too much wind or over production and pay them for the electric they are not producing needs to be put on a real commercial basis they make it and the grid pays for what they get --nothing more pumped storage is good -but again all that should be fully paid for by wind farms and not grants etc smooths out the electricity daily requirement If it don,t stack up that way --then it nots worth doing theo ne sure supply is tidal -- but too much investment at start to get the private commercail companies to go for it 2 tides a day --every day for ever when i bought my land part of it was very suitable for solar we talked about a deal -- all was well till they realised they would have to pay to upgrade the local substation cos it could not ake 3.3 mega watts form the site deal never went any further

You need the lid off that chamber. There are no drainage pipes shown on the plan, but there must be some, somewhere. So perhaps that chamber is for the drains. I still say all would be answered in 5 minutes with the divining rods, then you know where to carefully dig for confirmation.

grp will out last any other choice if it failed it was simply badly laid main reason for grp not working is damp under it to do it right you must use new osb below it and don,t let it get wet bfore apllying grp matting and resin

Where the blue pipe changes direction there have to be chambers. So the question is whether the plan is wrong, and the pipes are on the green manhole line, or there are more. Also, that is a big, and probably very deep chamber.

It's hard to find ladders with flat rungs now. Wrong shoes + square rungs = muscle pain. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Ubakus is a simple tool, very useful for calculating U values but limited in judging moisture issues. It assumes, for instance, that the PIR layer will be totally continuous with no gaps. This is unrealistic unless you foam and tape all joints. A solid understanding of the core principles of safe layered construction and good workmanship are more important than a calculator. 1. Your primary aim is to prevent any moisture laden internal air migrating to any part of the wall/roof that the temperature can fall below the dew point and condense. This is done by excellent airtighess. Take any material that is airtight, like a membrane, OSB or even plasterboard and make a perfectly continuous layer somewhere in the wall/roof. It can be internal or external but it must not have any gaps or cracks anywhere. This will stop the flow of vapour laden internal air outwards to beyond the dew point. 2. Next ensure that any small amount of moisture that does get in there (through inevitable slips in assembly or construction moisture) can dry readily. This is where your materials of low vapour permanently* and sometimes external ventilation are important. The lightly availability of "drying" at the dew point determines your required materials and ventilation. TBC *Vapour Permanbility is a much better term than "breathable." It has SI units attached and can be accurately measured. "Breathable" gets conflated with "ventilation", it gets used by salesmen to sell everything from anoraks to lime plaster with little intelligent insight. In my opinion the it belongs in the bin along with "thermal mass" and other such terms that are thrown around with little other than guesswork and superstition.

Sort of. I think this is the real plan: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/07/11/chinese-electric-cars-to-power-your-home-in-octopus-deal/#:~:text=A Chinese electric car maker,parked in their driveway... You can just imagine how the conversation went - Minister, if we prohibit the sale of ICE and force everyone to buy electric cars and we tell people to plug them in to get a 'discount' on their electricity bills, that gives us 33 million x 60 kWh of storage, which is nearly 2000 GWh of storage, which gives us 40 days of energy security even if we generate nothing for a few days. And the best part is, it won't cost us a thing, the public will pay without even realising. Even better we'll finally be able to introduce road pricing and increase revenue from that. Minister, this will transform our country, and you'll go down in history with a legacy few will ever surpass. Whilst there are obvious flaws to such a plan, you could see how a politician would get on board with such a vision. Nothing wrong of course with the idea of using your car as a power bank. Whether its better for the grid vs distributed storage at local / household level is a different question.

We are NE Scotland so hot days are less extreme, but we get quite a bit of solar gain especially in spring and autumn. Have had up to 27 inside the lounge when about 10 outside. When hot outside Close all windows and doors. Close blinds if sun coming in If a warm period have the UFH in cooling mode. UF cooling will temper the extreme, but makes the house feel cooler than the air temperature would suggest. Your body heat is moving to the floor (radiating). Once inside is warmer than outside open windows and doors. But leave cooling mode on.

I am a huge EPDM fanboy. I absolutely recognise your situation. I installed my own EPDM loose lay rubber roof in my previous house in 2003 and sold it in 2021. It's still there and I never experienced a single issue. I have insisted on EPDM for our new extension and am delighted with it installed, but, my god, did I have problems finding an installer. Every installer wants to put in the thing that they do and finding a genuine EPDM specialist is very difficult. I don't want felt - it DOES crack eventually and it DOES leak eventually and it does need replacing. In my opinion it's a liability I don't need. I also hate GRP. I had a small GRP roof put over an external fireplace and it barely lasted two years before cracking and losing it's waterproofing abilities. I have no direct experience of the polymer paint stuff, a repair done with this in a commercial property that I help with has also failed, though this was 5 years after the repair I used the thicker Firestone EPDM in my new extension and it is very much tougher than the normal stuff. I'm planning on a green roof at some point, so the thicker membrane seemed like the way to go. Here's a pic of the finished EPDM Good luck and regards Tet

Ours uses an LMS server - there are several implementations of this (look on one of the Pi suppliers websites) - we stream radio (mostly radio 6) and a lot of our music has been ripped to the server. LMS supports players which can be based on Pi Zeros and you can synchronise players (there's no lag) or play different things on different players. Ours also sees our Google minis as players as well as the TV soundbar. And there's no wires, it's all wifi. A very cost effective multi-room hi-fi system (OK, it takes a bit of reading up and investigation to set things up but for some of us that's a bonus!). Simon

the most used things on my site are the 3t digger and the 3 ton dumper i could not have manged any of my project without it especially with the stone grab -it has made my jobs possible and you cannot overestimate how much time and energy it saves and how much one man can do apart from cost of extra help - especialy if you are an oldly like me on the mountainous site i have

Any would do the job Use what ever method is normal for your area, then trades are easy to get.

Why not put in a larger MVHR system that can cope with moving greater amounts of air about? There seems to be a fixation that MVHR can never be used for effective cooling. It may not be the most cost effective method, and probably harder to install, but buildings all over the world have used forced air heating a cooling, except in the UK, where we like to think we are World Class and know best.

An example of "under engineering" In the tv's I only put power, 3 * coax and a cat 5 cable to the bedroom tv points. We then decided we wanted sound in the bedroom, from the same Pi Music box as downstairs. A quick bit of lateral thinking I repurposed the 2 spare coax cables as audio left and right to the bedroom.

Passivhaus is as much for warm climate as it is cold. Cooling demand is in PHPP. As above. Recirculation of cooling air required to make any difference. Unlikely to work using the MVHR input with low flow rates - Unless you have a very well designed (i.e. certified) PH.

Always possible. The proposed site has access to Ultrafast 1Gbit FTTP... Need is such a strong word... 😉 My experience tells me that if I put the minimum amount of cabling into key locations and then *in the future* need to do something else, it will be far, far more costly and difficult rather than paying a small price premium for cables I may not need at the point where access is easy. You only have the think about the various interactions of technology and the choices you might make. The first streaming sticks were capable of just plugging into your HDMI port and working over wireless. Then you started needing to add USB power to them as the power requirements for additional features increased, and some TVs didn't have USB ports that could provide the power. Then TVs started having powered USB ports. Then it was suggested you might not be able to stream at high-def at high frame rates. Then the sticks started using quicker wireless standards and wireless network speed caught up. I have USB extension cables from my media hub to two current TVs in the lounge and playroom (though the kids are too old to call it a playroom now). I put them in because it allowed me to do some clever things with the Wii and Playstation at the time. Since we don't use the old Playstation any longer and the Wii will work quite happily on radio frequencies, they are no longer required, but they are also not doing any harm stuck behind a wall. Of course, if your personal circumstances or the design of your house make routing cables difficult or expensive, then you can make a personal decision about what you want to do. But for me, when it's easy and the cost is low, I'd over-engineer the solution every day of the week.

I published an article about this over a decade ago, I wonder if read it. There are some advantages of small, local storage in that the grid does not need reinforcing and the individual unit prices are low, so it is a very scalable system.

Errr…..yes they will if you pay them.

Gotcha. For timber/materials questions I currently have... Materials and sources - what type of wood? where from? is it sustainably harvested? what treatments are applied? how do you ensure supply? how do you manage fluctuating costs of timber and materials?

I think you need to believe. I used to do it 2 directions then half way between was often accurate. But sometimes not. Now you have a manhole, buy lifting keys and look in. Where do the branches point?

I had the opposite. Scottish water subcontracted our water connection. The plan said the water was in the verge the other side of the road. The subbies dug for it and could not find it. They dug deeper and further from the road into the field, still no sign. They were on the verge of packing up and going home when I got my rods out. You could see them sniggering as I slowly walked further into the field and my rods reacted, so I said "here it is". Just to humour me they dug a bit further and there it was.

The water board used rods to locate their water main for my site 🤷‍♂️

Or pay for a G99 inverter if you need to and switch to zero export. The maths for paying MCS prices would soon change if we went that direction.

But surely you can switch off/disconnect PV. If you can divert excess to an immersion you can divert to open cct 🤷‍♂️

Hopefully this new gov will fast track this sort of thing.

Ha, it's a nice idea but being halfway down a valley and a little exposed to the elements, I fear I will find it in at the bottom of the valley in the river one morning. It definitely needs to be secured to the ground somehow.

I cant claim any expertise, but it doesn't look particularly dodgy to me. Plot addresses are frequently 'land adjacent to ...' or similar. Speak to Approved Inspectors Ltd and ask for a copy of the initial notice referred to in para 2, so as you can see the 'official' scope of works. If electrics/glazing was part of the notice, then I expect certificates were provided to the inspector prior to his sign off.

You will need the certificates for electrics and glazing. The building regs certificated does not seem to relate to the stable block conversion but it is hard to say as you have redacted the first paragraph. Have you seen the initial notice?

Hi Please refer attached document page 1 section Application: 0.2 The recommendation of this volume of this approved document apply to newly erected dwellings, and dwellings undergoing alteration only. They do not apply to the extension of a dwelling BR_PDF_AD_M1_2015_with_2016_amendments_V3.pdf

The bottom half of the fortnightly wheelie bin is good for "stuff" and then the normal rubbish on top hides anything I only take big stuff to the tip that's too big for the bin.

Gypsum is used to break down heavy clay soils, if you throw it in the cement mixer with a couple of bricks it'll powder up, then just line the bottom of your skip with it or bag it as sell it :D

I had a girlfriend who was a 'saver', I always knew how much she had saved, it equalled my overdraft.

18 months into 8 month build . Thats nothing mate ! - I’m 12 yrs into a build of “ yet to be established timeframe “ . You’re either shite like me , lazy , incompetent or just a legend ( also like me ) 👍

Had Princess Anne tour our factory, she is now an expert on material testing machines, and we got the Queen's Award for Export. She looked elsewhere, mainly her watch I seem to remember.

Awwww, thanks. ❤️ When I'm interrogating asking questions of suppliers, I always imagine how grateful they must be to get someone who is so excited about what they do... 😉